About 10 Turkish
military vehicles left the camp early Monday, Turkish and Iraqi
officials said, and they are moving to another base in northern Iraq.
While Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the move was meant to address Baghdad’s concerns, he added that Ankara had no plans to leave the disputed base.

It
did little to assuage Iraqi officials who see Ankara’s presence as an
illegal incursion. “Redeployment is not withdrawal,” said Iskander Witwit, a member of Iraq’s parliament who sits on the defense and security committee.

The move comes only after Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr declared that his forces/followers would be willing to protect Iraq by taking on the Turkish forces.

And if you're looking to award credit for the small move on Turkey's part, it's to Moqtada, not the inept White House which had Vice President Joe Biden joshing and cajoling the Turkish government with empty words.

But then the US government has never provided any leadership on Iraq other than leading into an illegal war and leading on how to continue it forever.

(Or are we supposed to forget what today is the anniversary of?)

(The fake out, for those who've forgotten.)

Instead of leading, the US government has behaved shamefully and criminally.

The documents show how Washington, seeking to defeat Sunni jihadists
and stabilise Iraq, has consistently overlooked excesses by Shi’ite
militias sponsored by the Iraqi government. The administrations of
George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both worked with Badr and its
powerful leader, Hadi al-Amiri, whom many Sunnis continue to accuse of
human rights abuses.Washington’s policy of expediency has
achieved some of its short-term aims. But in allowing the Shi’ite
militias to run amok against their Sunni foes, Washington has fueled the
Shia-Sunni sectarian divide that is tearing Iraq apart.The
decade-old U.S. investigation of the secret prison implicates officials
and political groups in a wave of sectarian killings that helped ignite a
civil war. It also draws worrying parallels to the U.S. government’s
muted response today to alleged abuses committed in the name of fighting
Islamic State.Those accused of running the secret prison or of
helping cover up its existence include the current head of the Iraqi
judiciary, Midhat Mahmoud, Transport Minister, Bayan Jabr, and a long
revered Badr commander popularly referred to as Engineer Ahmed.

I would argue that they've done more than overlook, they've rewarded these terrorists.

And they continue to.

There is no political solution in Iraq because the US government doesn't demand it.

Oh, sure, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will lie to Congress (we noted that two Fridays ago, remember?) but lying's all they offer.

And they'll continue bombing even though it's achieved nothing.

Yesterday, the Defense Dept announced:

Strikes in IraqBomber and fighter aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:-- Near Huwayjah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck three separate ISIL
tactical units and destroyed three vehicle bombs, two ISIL improvised
bombs, five ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL heavy machine gun, and an
ISIL light machine gun.-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL mortar tube.-- Near Ramadi, three strikes struck three ISIL staging areas,
denied ISIL access to terrain, and destroyed an ISIL bed down location,
two ISIL staging areas, and an ISIL command and control node.-- Near Sinjar, three strikes struck three separate ISIL
tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions and two light
machine guns.-- Near Tikrit, a strike destroyed two ISIL oil tanks.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.